Casio Brings CZ Synthesizer To The iPad

casio-cz-appCasio has introduced CZ App for iPad – a new software synthesizer, designed to reproduce the sound of Casio’s best-selling CZ-series models.

The CZ App features a built-in 4-part PD (phase distortion) sound source. Its 36 waveforms are capable of generating an extensive and diverse range of sounds. The created tones can also be played on MIDI-compatible instruments.

Here’s a video demo:

Other Features:

  • Play along to your favorite audio files – You can use the keyboard to play along to audio files on an iPad.
  • Multi-play mode combines keyboard layouts to allow new ways of playing – The new performance interface lets you can combine 2, 3 or 4 keyboards, or even flip the layout so that other people can play along with you.
  • Supports external MIDI instruments and inter-app collaboration
    • Inter-App Audio
    • Audiobus compatible (input only)
    • Playable using an external MIDI keyboard(via a third-party MIDI interface, an Apple Lightning-USB camera adapter* plus USB cable, or the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit* plus USB cable)

Casio CZ App is available for US $19.99 in the App Store. If you’ve used CZ App, leave a comment with your thoughts on it.

16 thoughts on “Casio Brings CZ Synthesizer To The iPad

  1. I’ve been playing with it all evening and I’m really happy with it. The tone stacking is fantastic, and almost makes up for the small number (34) of presets. Once you start layering them and tweaking them, there’s a whole lot of depth there, especially with a keyboard controller. The flip feature is very cool, too. I think it’s a bit pricey, only in that for $20 I wish it had more and a wider variety of presets, and a sequencer/record mode. But I saw on the Japanese product page some screencaps that might indicate that there’s more to come for this app, including modes for recording a “Song” and a “Drum” mode, to go along with the current “Synth” and “Mixer” modes. As a fan of the old CZ-101 — my first real synthesizer — I’m very pleased and impressed. I still need to get Retronym’s Phase84 and compare the two. BTW, despite the recommended specs, I am running this on a regular iPad2 with iOS8 and not having any problems.

  2. …but, can it be used as a controller/programmer for the hardware? I’ve got a CZ5000 in my rack that I’d sure like to give a little more love to, if only it weren’t such a painstaking process to program it.

    1. reactor, have you checked out VirtualCZ? http://www.pluginboutique.com/product/4-Synth/1158-VirtualCZ

      BTW, the answer is “no”, there’s nothing in the app that I’ve seen that could be used to directly program tones on the CZ series of hardware. But I *think* the numbers you generate in the app would be compatible with the synths. That is, you could experiment with the CZ App, create tones that sound good, then replicate the numbers on the 5000.

  3. @ reactor- you should check out cz touch, works great with my cz1000 and my Mac.
    Was really hoping they were going to do iPhone version 🙁
    Is there going to be an iPhone version?

  4. This is nice, but next to VZ the CZ were nothing. I NEED new iPD synth, and I hope the popularity of the CZ does not hinder the evolution.

  5. Something needs to be done about the old hardware versions though with the fact that when look online for a used cz101 it is priced more than new (same with yamaha dx100 or casio vl1) I think a dose of “come on” is need on craigslist, i see allot of overprice gear that stays on there for months.

    The real problem is someone makes a hot song with a funky piece of hardware, then it price goes though the roof

    1. If the phase distortion engine is emulated to a really high degree, this is a much better bet than an £150-200 second-hand CZ-101 which I really wanted recently in a fit of GAS. That’s too much for what is a very old piece of hardware though.

      The fact the app is branded Casio could be a good sign in this regard, or a bad one, as I don’t think they have much App Store experience. As the cz is digital it’s totally possible to do it well, but then there’s the flaws/qualities in the original hardware dac that gives character as well. Anyone comment on the sound vs orig 101?

  6. Thanks for the replies, everyone. I checked out the various apps that were mentioned above in recent weeks, but held off on acquiring any of them, thinking that the official Casio app would likely be the top dog. Looks like i’ll need to give the other guys another look. I presume it wouldn’t be a pipe dream to anticipate Casio incorporating this sort of functionality into a future update.

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